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Published: August 4th 2012
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Day 28 – Friday 27
th July - Mornington Wilderness Sanctuary
We had camped next to the small river on the property, Annie Creek, home to a rich variety of birdlife, including the rare purple-headed fairy wren and the endangered Gouldian finch. Supping our cup of tea at 6am all Mark and I could see and identify was the very cute looking, green and red (or red and green) crimson finch. A whole family was hopping around on the bush next to our tent, but as soon as we moved closer to take a better photo they flew away to safety.
As we had one full day at Mornington we decided to go canoeing along the Dimond Gorge in the morning. We booked two 2-person canoes and got to the water after the 20km drive by 8.30am, meaning we had the whole gorge to ourselves for a good couple of hours. It was stunning and peaceful. The rock formations are incredible – a mixture of 1.8 billion year old King Leopold Sandstone and volcanic dolorite, all folded and pushed into bluffs, escarpments etc, and then eroded by massive forces of water once a year for millions of years.
Despite the warning that freshwater crocs inhabit the river we failed to spot any. But that’s probably a good thing. After paddling downstream with the wind behind us for 2kms we had reached the end of the canoe-able section of the gorge and stopped at a beach for a picnic. By the time we headed back upstream again there were several other canoes on the water and it was a good time to park up the canoes and make our way back to camp.
Our early start and vigorous paddling had made us quite tired so we decided to have a bit of a siesta before exploring the Blue Bush waterhole and Sir John Gorge (for sunset). The waterhole is pretty big and would have made a great swimming pool to do some laps and get some (more) exercise in, however we were much more interested in the rope swing. The sandy beach was a great spot for some more relaxing and reading (I am now on the second book of the Millenium trilogy and am confident I will easily get all three books read by the time we get home, with quite a few beach days coming up
next month).
At 4pm we continued along the track to the Sir John Gorge for yet another spectacular sunset. As we are very short of provisions we didn’t have any beer rations to sup while watching the rocks change colour. Definitely looking forward to restocking when we get to Derby! Despite the lack of beer, it was a worthwhile drive and a beautiful sunset. On the way back we heard a big crunch while slowly driving over a very rutted and rocky dry creek crossing. Back on the relatively flat road we checked the damage and saw that the step on the driver’s side had taken a bit hit and was slightly raised in the middle. Not a major drama as no mechanical damage was done but it is something we will have to get fixed somewhere along the line.
Back at the campsite I had lots of offers of help from the kids to cook the classic camping meal of corned beef hash. I don’t think I’ve ever cooked it before but it didn’t seem difficult. We boiled up the remaining potatoes, chopped up a tin of corned beef and opened up a tin of baked beans.
Mix it all up together (after mashing the potatoes) and you get…. a big sloppy mess! We tried to fry it in patties to make it look more attractive but that didn’t work either. However, it did taste OK and went down well together with leftovers of last night’s more gourmet offering of chorizo, tomato and kidney bean risotto. We splashed out on a bottle of wine from the Mornington bar and generously offered the kids a bottle of lemon lime and bitters as their treat. There are just a few items rattling around in the big food box in the back of the car and the fridge is so empty we have space to chill our bottles of water, which is a great luxury in the 30 degree heat of the Kimberley days.
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